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Daily iPad App: Air Harp
The Air Harp is an interesting stringed instrument. It produces breath-taking sounds, yet it's relatively easy to play. It's so easy that many elementary schools use the instrument to teach children music. If you enjoy the sound of a harp and don't want to worry about tuning the strings, you should check out Air Harp, an iPad and iPhone version of the stringed instrument. You'll never replace the feel of the instrument with an iPad, but the Air Harp app does an excellent job reproducing the sound of a harp. The virtual harp has 15 strings representing two octaves of notes in G Major. You can tap the strings to create your own tune, or use sheet music to play a well-known song. The app includes several pieces of sheet music, and you can buy additional collections for 99-cents each. Playing the harp is easy, even for the musically-challenged individual. All you have to do is follow the notes on the sheet music. It helps if you have a basic understanding of music, but even if you don't know the difference between an eighth note and a quarter note, you can still play the harp. You just have to know the tune well enough to tap along. If you want to get a little crazy with the harp, the app lets you pluck or strum the strings without changing any settings. This tap-and-strum mode was a much-requested feature missing in previous versions of the app. Overall, Air Harp is enjoyable and relaxing for the music-oriented adult. Unlike other music apps which require you to tap falling dots on a screen, the app uses real notes and strings which makes it an excellent learning tool for children. Air Harp is a universal app and available from the App Store for $0.99.
Daily iPad App: Sonic CD
Honestly, I can't really profess to be that big a Sonic fan. I like and have played most of the 2D iterations of Sega's headline platformer series on the Genesis, the Game Gear, and most recently, iOS. But I'm not a superfan by any means, and if I've ever played Sonic CD before, I don't remember. I certainly never owned it (though I do remember renting a Sega CD with a friend and playing Night Trap and Sewer Shark over a few weekends). All that said, Sonic CD, release just recently as a universal app for iOS, seems to me to be an exceptionally faithful port of what I do remember about Sonic, offering up colorful graphics, strong controls (performed with a virtual pad and jump button, and all of the standard complaints that come with virtual controls), and a great Sonic soundtrack. I do know that Sonic CD is heralded as one of the best Sonic 2D games, and this version of it comes off as a loving recreation of the original title. Especially on the iPad, these varied and well-designed worlds are big, bright, and beautiful to behold. And Sonic CD for iOS also offers a nice mix of old-school spareness with modern features. There are achievements and online leaderboards, but they're buried in very old-school style menus and are out of the way as you play the old games. I recently said that the Grand Theft Auto port was the best console recreation I'd seen on the iPad, but Sonic CD definitely gives that title a run for its money. It's very well done. Plus, the game's only $2.99 for the universal app, which makes this one a no-brainer. You do have to enjoy Sonic's frenzied platformer gameplay, but whether you're a Sonic CD veteran or never got a chance to play this version of the running hedgehog, this one's worth a look.
Daily iPad app: OneNote for the iPad
After years of developing mobile tools for its own platform, Microsoft has finally released a series of apps for the iPad including Lync, OneNote and Kinectimals. Hands down, the most anticipated of the bunch is OneNote, Microsoft's popular desktop app for taking and organizing notes. It's the premier solution for the desktop, but, unfortunately, it falls short on the Apple tablet. The app pulls OneNote documents down from SkyDrive and lets you both view and edit the documents on your iPad. Unfortunately, most of the document formatting is not available on the iPad. I had some beautiful OneNote documents with colorful text, tags, tables and different-sized fonts. You can see an example document below and compare it to the iPad version above. When I viewed the documents on the iPad, tags were missing, and all the text appeared in a small, bland, black font. Even worse, tables were formatted as images and not editable. Creating new OneNote documents is also very limited on the iPad. You can't create new notebooks or pages; you're only allowed to add new notes. Notebook security is also an issue as you can't view notes or add notes to a notebook that has a password. Overall, OneNote for the iPad is disappointing. I was hoping for additional editing options and better support for some of the basic attributes of a document. It's not like these features can't be edited on a mobile device. Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system supports OneNote document editing and it gives you excellent access to most of the document properties. If you only need an app to view plain OneNote documents, you may want to download and try OneNote for the iPad. It's free and it does let you view simple documents. Syncing on the iPad also works well, and changes were uploaded almost immediately. Reliable syncing, though, doesn't make up for an app that's only half as capable as it should be. If you want to try OneNote for the iPad, you can grab it for free from the iOS App Store.
Daily iPad App: LostWinds
I really enjoyed LostWinds when it came out on the Wii a couple of years ago -- it's a physics-based platformer, essentially, but the twist is that you don't just control a really beautifully rendered little kid named Toku wandering around a very artistic world, you also control the wind spirit that can push him and various objects in the environment around. On the Wii, this was accomplished with an on-screen cursor and a swing of the Wii remote, but on the iPad and iPhone, it's accomplished with a swipe across the screen. As a result, this version seems less tactile and a little less control-intensive, which I'm not convinced is necessarily a negative, just different. On the Wii version, for example, you could move the joystick and press a button to get Toku to jump, and then swipe across the screen at exactly the right time to carry him with a gust. On the iPad, however, you just need to swipe him around (and more often than not, I found myself just pushing him around with the wind rather than just controlling him by tapping on the screen). That might destroy a little bit of the game's atmosphere, but honestly, the atmosphere is strong enough (with a really great artistic palette and some excellent musical backing) that it can handle a little playfulness. While the game has the same strengths of the Wii title, it also suffers from some of its weaknesses: It's relatively short, and the puzzles aren't really too tough to figure out. Unfortunately (unless they've hidden it really well), Frontier Developments hasn't included the sequel that arrived on the Wii in this release, so presumably it'll come out on iOS later on. Then again, at only $3.99 for a universal version, the game's priced much more reasonably than the $10 it cost me when it came out on the Wii. LostWinds is a really excellent title, and the game's wind-based physics have been translated quite well to iOS with this one. If you never got to play through it the first time on WiiWare, you probably shouldn't let it breeze by you this time around.
Daily iPad App: Mini Motor Racing HD
Developer The Binary Mill has been trying a number of different approaches on iOS (including the Penny Arcade-approved Decide-o-Tron game recommendation app), but Mini Motor Racing HD is the company's most solid release yet, in my estimation. It's a top-down mini car-racing game with a pretty exceptional amount of polish. The controls are well-made, there's a lot of fun progression options for a number of different cars, and the cars themselves are really well-rendered, so much so that on the iPad especially they really do look like real little toys. The game only has one option for multiplayer, you can only play with one other player, either over WiFi or Bluetooth. But the single-player campaign mode is pretty filled out anyway, with more than 20 tracks and plenty of cars to unlock and upgrade. There's Game Center integration for leaderboards as well, so there's plenty of game to play through. Mini Motor Racing HD is a solid mini racing game -- the cars feel solid, handle well, and the tracks are short and fun enough that the game's enjoyable even when you don't come in first. It's available on the iPad right now for $3.99 or on the iPhone for $1.99.
Daily iPad App: Grand Theft Auto 3
I'm not quite willing to call Grand Theft Auto 3 old school -- I spent so much time on the original top-down versions of the series that those are still more retro to me than the fully 3D graphics and living, open-world city that GTA3 made famous on the consoles (a tradition that continues right up into Saints Row: The Third, which I recently played on my Xbox, and next year's Grand Theft Auto 5). But it's been ten years since we first saw the streets of Liberty City from the ground up, and Rockstar Games has now brought this classic to iOS as a universal version. And especially on my iPad 2, I'm willing to call it the best console port I've ever seen. The graphics look and run terrific, and the virtual controls, while still a little creaky, actually work really great despite all of the various things you can do. Newcomers to this one used to modern console games will probably notice all of the polygons, but as a reproduction of the original game, it really does look and play very well. And though it's only been ten years, it's really awesome to drive around the streets of Liberty City once again, and listen in to Lazlo's Chatterbox and all of the other great radio stations, checking out all of the open world city conventions (from grabbing any car to escaping the cops) that originated right here. If you've never played this game, you might find it a little aged. The missions are a little unclear compared to today's more simplistic fare, and there's no line to follow on your minimap: All you get is a little dot to go after. But for those of us who really enjoyed the heck out of this one all those years ago, this is great to see, and it's clear that Rockstar has brought it over to this platform with great care. This is an excellent version of this great game, and playing it on my iPad 2 took my right back to those days in my parent's basement when my friends and I would just drive around trying to get four stars and try to escape the cops. One note of warning: The game says it's built for all current iOS devices, including the iPad 1, but a lot of the iTunes reviews say it doesn't run great on those older machines. If you have an iPad 2 or an iPhone 4S, however, it should run quite well. I had one audio glitch while playing, but it definitely wasn't gamebreaking. Grand Theft Auto 3's anniversary iOS edition is available for $4.99 right now.
Daily iPad App: Master Your DSLR Camera
Those wanting to upgrade to a DSLR might find there's a steep learning curve involved. Instead of relying on automatic controls, you're faced with a slew of new tools and concepts. And while you can get decent photos with a DSLR's automatic settings, it's nothing like learning to use the manual controls on a camera. The new $9.99 Master Your DSLR Camera from Open Air Publishing is an absolutely luscious interactive book with video tutorials, an in-depth look at how your camera works, how to fix common image problems and answers to just about any question you have about using a DSLR. The app, built using Inkling, is geared toward beginners, but I can see professionals using this as well. It allows you to take notes and saves highlights and bookmarks. All of these are accessible from anywhere in the app. You can set up an account to share highlights and notes, useful if you're a teacher and want your students to have this book. I really enjoyed the detailed shooting guide for taking pictures of everything from pets to forests. It doesn't just teach you what the camera controls are for but how to use it in real-life situations. Even if a DSLR isn't in your immediate future, this book teaches you basic photography principles. Most point-and-shoot cameras have a few manual controls, and you can learn how to use to get the most out of the camera you already have. If you have an interest in photography and want to know more, Master Your DSLR Camera is the best purchase you can make.
Daily iPad App: Monster Fruit
Monster Fruit is a game that, on the surface, looks to be incredibly easy. There's fruit in the tree. You need to keep the fruit away from the overexcited monster trying to turn it into a nummy snack, and to do this, you tickle the monster to distract it. If the monster gets the fruit before the timer is up, you fail the level. Once the monster calms down at the end of the allotted time, you can reward him with the fruit. Parents with toddlers know this scenario all too well. At first, I thought I'd mastered the game. I figured out to keep tickling the monster in the first couple of levels until the timer was up. Then on the third level, both monsters work together to steal that piece of fruit, and the game suddenly veered from deceptively easy to incredibly hard as I tried to tickle both monsters and keep the fruit away from them. I've yet to get past the third level, though I got close at one point. I passed the iPad to my husband to see how well he'd do. The inventive cursing that came as a result really isn't suitable for TUAW, but he did pass the level and got a better score than I did. He said the game is probably best played on a table, where you can use both hands to control the fruit and the monsters. There are a couple things I feel the game lacks. I think it could use a difficulty setting so I could keep it to just one monster that can be played over and over again, suitable for a small child. It could also use a separate one-page help screen that explains how you can get up to a 3-star score in a level. But overall, I really like it. The challenge combined with cute graphics and a cheeky sense of humor and catchy music makes this game a keeper. Monster Fruit is US$1.99 in the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Defenders of Ardania
Tower defense is a genre that's almost run its course, if you ask me. But Defenders of Ardania is still a really solid tower defense title for the iPad that does find some innovation left in the process of setting up towers and letting them take out the incoming bad guys. The twist here is that while you're building towers for defense, you're also purchasing your own invading forces, which are then sent to wander out towards your enemy's castle. In other words, it's a kind of reverse tower defense, where you both attack and defend against an enemy doing the same. Unfortunately, that makes things a little complicated -- you still have a gold pool which you refresh by killing bad guys (as usual), but you need to use that pool to summon both towers and invading forces. And as if that's not enough, you also have various spells to buff up your troops, and you can also lay down traps on incoming troops to stop them in their tracks, all while trying to bring down the enemy base's health and keeping yours up. Like I said, it's complicated. That may appeal to some players -- the graphics are 2D but very well-designed and functional, and while there's lots to do, the UI itself is pretty well designed. Fans of more straightforward tower defense will probably want to look elsewhere (I'll recommend the great Gem Keeper yet again here), and those on the fence can check out Defenders of Ardania's free version. Those up for a challenge who want something a little different from the tower defense genre should definitely give this one a look. There's a full campaign mode, multiplayer battles with Game Center integration, and lots of complex tower defense/attack gameplay to be had for just $4.99.
Daily iPad App: Michael Jackson The Experience HD
Ubisoft released a version of its Michael Jackson Experience game for iOS recently, and it's actually a pretty good time. The game was originally created for motion controls with the Xbox Kinect, the Wii, and the PlayStation Move, but here on the iPad, you "dance" by swiping across the screen in various directions, and hitting on or pulling your finger off at certain times. The dance game is solid, and the production values are actually quite well done. If you like Michael Jackson's library, there's some great music here to "perform" and listen to, and the various songs are all accompanied by really well-done cinematic sequences evoking the original music videos and images that went along with the original songs. Unfortunately, the one big drawback is that there's not a huge selection of music to pull from. The console versions boasted a choice of about twenty songs, but this version only includes four when you purchase it, and then you need to buy other songs and costumes via in-app purchase. The game itself is $4.99, and then other songs are $1.99 each, though there are only three to choose from. So if you really want to play a game like this and have one of those consoles, you might just be better served finding the game on sale somewhere. On the other hand, as a taster, this version is not a bad game at all, and once you get all of the moves rolling and have figured out how to do them, it's fun to play through "Smooth Criminal" or "Beat It" and try to score as many "Perfects" as you can. As a sampler, this one's pretty good. It's on the iPad right now for $4.99.
Daily iPad App: Doodlecast
Doodlecast is one of several Doodling applications for the iPad that targets kids from 3- to 5-years-old. What separates Doodlecast from its competition is the ability to narrate the Doodle while your child is drawing. The app has a record option that'll record the drawing as the child creates it and will capture the child talking using the iPad's microphone. It's an appealing combination that makes creating doodles fun for the child and enjoyable for parents who can watch the doodle after it's done. Doodlecast has many features that help with doodle creation. It launches with several preset doodles like sky and park that contain pre-made drawings. The child can add to this template, and record what they draw. There are also some idea-based doodles like "big," which ask the child to draw something he or she thinks is big. If your child wants to start with a blank slate, there's that option, too. The drawing canvas uses the entire screen of the iPad and has a straightforward interface. At the top, there is a new button, a recording button that can turn the recording feature on and off, and a done button that'll let you export the video. At the bottom is a color selector that changes the color you are using, and a clear button to erase the entire drawing. There's no tool to change the width of the finger stroke, but you don't need that option in an app meant for young children. When your child is done doodling, you can play back the video of the drawing's creation before you export it. You can save it to the iPad, or export it to YouTube to share with friends or relatives. Saving the video places it in your photos library where you can email it, watch it on your iPad or use AirPlay to watch it on your TV. If you decide to upload it to YouTube, the app lets you add a title, description, tag, and category. You can also set the doodle video to public or private. Uploading it to YouTube is as easy as hitting the publish button and it takes about a minute to prepare and upload the video over Wi-Fi. Doodlecast is an excellent app for kids. Just make sure you have a lot of space on your iPad. I handed my iPad over to my kids to check it out; my iPad disappeared for an hour and returned to me chock full of videos. The app appealed to my younger children who just doodled and my 9-year-old, who enjoyed using it to tell a story. The app costs a reasonable US$1.99 and will give your children hours of fun.
Daily iPad App: Weather Live
We've reviewed plenty of weather apps for the iPad on TUAW. Matter of fact I think the high number of weather apps we've reviewed is due to the fact that we're still looking for the perfect iPad weather app. Weather Live isn't that app. It's good, just not the holy grail. First the good. I like Weather Live because it does have beautiful backgrounds (see gallery below) and makes it easy to navigate between cities (just swipe right or left). The app also offers five different layouts and generous display settings. You can of course choose between Fahrenheit/Celsius and miles/kilometers. Like most weather apps for iPad, Weather Live offers a clock, which you can display 12-hour or 24-hour time with or without seconds as well as local or regional times. The app's brightness control is unique. Instead of a slider, you can just drag your finger up or down the screen to adjust the brightness. This is useful if you disable the iPad's auto-lock feature through the app, which lets you use it as a clock on the nightstand. You can see the current time and weather as soon as you get up. Another nice feature puts current temperature as a badge on the icon on your homescreen. Unfortunately, Weather Live suffers from several UI problems that plague other weather apps. Yeah, animated backgrounds are nice, but sometimes the images don't contrast with the text enough so that it's hard to read the forecast. Also, the black and white icons representing weather conditions look too similar, and it's hard to tell them apart when looking at the week view. I'm still looking for an iPad weather app that closely mimics Apple's Weather app on the iPhone: clean design, not a lot of eye candy, easy to get the forecast at a glance. If you're like me and want the same thing out of a weather app for the iPad, Weather Live is not for you (but then again, no iPad weather app is yet). However, if you do like weather apps that are more beautiful than bare-bones-informational, Weather Live is a great choice. It's only US$0.99 and is a universal app, so it works on both the iPad and iPhone. But for me, my search for the perfect iPad weather app continues. %Gallery-140326%
Daily iPad App: eHarmony
When eHarmony first brought its iPad app to us a couple of months ago, I had the great idea (I thought) to put together a feature for TUAW around the idea of only the iPad app to access the very popular Internet dating service, find a date, and then review both the app and the date itself. So eHarmony kindly provided me with a couple months of membership, and I set to work using the iPad app to craft my profile, find some nice women to date in Los Angeles, and eventually go out with one of them. Unfortunately for eHarmony, my lack of appeal outlasted their service, and despite chatting with a few nice women, none of them wanted to meet me over dinner or drinks. But I can't fault the iPad app itself. The whole experience is really impressive, featuring an interface that I actually enjoyed using more than the official web site. If you're a real loser like me, eHarmony still won't guarantee you a girlfriend or boyfriend. But if you're already using the service and have an iPad, the app is definitely worth a look. The whole process is surprisingly quick and clean on the iPad -- the app's interface is modeled around a big circular table of sorts, with the view zooming and rotating around to look at various physical items portrayed on the screen. Your sign-in page is a notebook, for example, where you can write your name and password, and then the view zooms to another book where you can enter your information and fill out your profile with the usual dating site information (likes, dislikes, personal information and questionnaires). After it's filled out, you can browse around the rest of the site, checking out a "Book of You" that has information about your personality and who you're compatible with, and your "matches" which are laid out like a series of Polaroid photos on the wooden desktop. The physical metaphor is really effective, and the iPad is an excellent medium for browsing through photos and information. The app works smoothly (though my iPad is only WiFi, so I'm not sure how it loads over 3G), and there are lots of really fun touches, which surprised me a bit. When you first log in, there's a coffee cup on top of the screen, and you can actually play with it, causing ripples and splashes on the surface of the java. When you touch a match's picture, you don't just get transferred to their profile, their picture actually zooms over to another section of the table and then gets inserted into their profile page. This is all with sound effects, too. The app shows a surprising amount of design thought and consideration. I'd guess that's because eHarmony probably hired an experienced Mac and iOS development house to make it, but I don't know who that is (and the companies in those kinds of work-for-hire agreements don't usually talk about that anyway). At any rate, the eHarmony app is terrific, and I actually did come to prefer it to using the main web page, mostly because the web itself doesn't offer up pictures of matches before you actually go and see their profiles. There were a few settings that I had to go in and change that I couldn't on the iPad version (specifically where my matches were supposed to come from. Being in Los Angeles, I obviously wanted to meet someone who lived close to me), but when actually browsing the service and reading and responding to messages, I found being on the iPad was the ideal. The app is free, but to use it, you'll need an eHarmony membership, which comes with a few different prices. You'll have to decide for yourself whether or not that's something you're interested in. Some folks have found a lot of good relationships with apps like this, while some have a better time just going to a bar. As for me, my search continues. Ladies, if any of you are looking for a smart and funny professional blogger who knows a lot about iPhone games and enjoys running around Santa Monica, I'll be here!
Daily iPad App: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Forty-six years after it debuted on prime-time television, the beloved Christmas classic A Charlie Brown Christmas comes to a new medium -- the iPad. But instead of simply releasing it as a downloadable video, the A Charlie Brown Christmas app turns the story of an incredibly depressed child (yeah, you Charlie Brown) into a wonderful animated storybook that is sure to delight a whole new generation of children. The developers at Loud Crow Interactive who designed the app deserve high praise. I'm in my 30s and still the app has managed to keep me enthralled. The A Charlie Brown Christmas app features the original music and voices from the television special, plus read-along narration by Peter Robbins, the original voice of Charlie Brown. The book itself is made up of twenty beautifully rendered pages, each depicting a scene from the show. But what's really cool about this app is the interactivity. Children both young and old can tap on any word to hear it pronounced. Every page features elements that can be interacted with, whether is changing the sign on Lucy's doctor stand, playing Schroder's piano or popping snowflakes. I showed the app to my one year-old nice this past Thanksgiving and even at her age she had a blast tapping the characters, making them sing, ice skate and dance. A Charlie Brown Christmas is actually a universal app, so its compatible with the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. In my opinion, the smaller screens don't do the app justice. You really need to use it on the iPad to get the full experience. A Charlie Brown Christmas is available in the App Store for US$6.99. %Gallery-140325%
Daily iPad App: Perfect365 touches up faces in a snap
I'm really impressed when powerful applications or techniques migrate to iOS and seem to work as well (or better than) as they do on the desktop. A good example is Perfect365 HD. This iPad app lets you take a photo of a person and modify it, 'improving' their facial structure, lips, eyes, nose, cheeks -- just about any part of the face that may need a nip here or a tuck there. Basically, the app gives any person a one click makeover. It's plastic surgery without the risk. Portrait photographers and advertising agencies have been using these techniques for years, but usually the work is complicated and takes a long time. Perfect365 can do it in a click or two. Facial recognition features identify the parts of the face and with a couple of clicks your can turn your significant other into something a bit beyond their normal look. You can be subtle or extreme. Images can be from your photo albums, or you can activate your camera and take the picture any time you want. When you're done, the enhanced image can be saved back to your photo album, or sent to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. I tried the app on some pictures of people I had stashed on my hard drive, and I must say the results are pretty amazing and easy to accomplish. Some friends really liked the enhancements, some found it all a bit creepy. I found subtle changes were the best, cleaning up complexions or whitening teeth. The app provides a before and after view so you can see exactly what has changed. I have some examples in the gallery. The app sells for US $4.99. I've used some Mac applications that are far more expensive but give similar results, although they offer more control and features. There's an iPhone version of the app that is now selling for $1.99. If you're a casual photographer with friends that aren't happy with their 'look' I'll bet this app will please them and make you popular at the same time. With the holidays here up you may be taking a lot of photos, and I think you'll be pleased with Perfect365. The app requires iOS 3.2 or greater. Arcsoft, the company that created the app, also has a Mac OS X version coming with, you guessed it, more control and more features. Check the gallery for some before and after photos. %Gallery-139899%
Daily iPad App: Wild Chords
Wild Chords is a really amazing app -- at its absolute base, it's an excellent and easy-to-use guitar tuner, perfect for kids or adults. But the real magic of Wild Chords is in actually playing the guitar along with the main game; this game will teach you, chord by chord and string by string, how to strum away some really excellent tunes. The app very colorful and well-made -- its simplicity hints that it's for children, but even as a beginner-to-medium guitar player, it was never condescending. The app starts easy, with a quick tune-up and then just an open chord test, and things get harder from there. The basic idea is that you're playing along to tame animals, so you need to play the right chord as your in-game character passes them while walking down a street: Eventually you'll be playing the A chord to tame an Ape, and a C chord to tame a crocodile, and so on. The game even shows a really nice sense of musical wit: The A minor chord is portrayed by a sad ape, the A major is a happy ape, and so on. The other level type, meant to teach individual string plucking, features birds sitting on five different telephone wires, with each of them given a number. On that game, you're mean to hit the fret marked by their number, and then strum the string they're sitting on. It's a very nice visual way to show tablature, and it works great. The feedback isn't perfect -- strumming the birds just puts them to sleep, and that's not too instinctively positive. But once you get the feedback whether you're doing it right or not, it works. The best part of this is that all of the animals you're collecting and taming are all attached to real songs, so as you strum to hit the right notes, you're actually accompanying an original song on the iPad as you play. Even the first lesson of the open chord is included in this, so Wild Chords pulls off the impressive feat of going from no guitar experience to being able to play along with a song in seconds. The later songs are really great too -- unfortunately, there are no lyrics, and these are all original songs, not pop hits or even the "traditional" tunes most people learn early on in guitar lessons. But they're all very catchy across a nice variety of styles, and given that the game doesn't ever punish you for experimenting (as long as you hit the notes you're supposed to hit), you can improvise and play in between the beats all you want, and it all works great. That said, if you're already a guitar expert, this might not quite be challenging enough. While the levels do get tough (you can even demo the more advanced levels, just to see what they're like), expert guitar players might not find much to learn until the very last few areas. Still, I think what's there does fit in with what most amateur players would want to learn, and Wild Chords does a lot with very little. I don't know what note detection system they're using or how it was designed, but considering that I was simply using the iPad's microphone in a quiet room with no special connection or setup, I was impressed by how well the app detected what I was playing and rewarded me accordingly. And here's the real kicker: The app is completely free to play. There are a few in-app purchases for extra content, but there's enough content in there already that you'll know after downloading and playing with it for a while if you need any more levels. I haven't done a lot of shopping for guitar tuner apps on the App Store yet, so I'm sure there are more advanced or feature-filled tuners out there, but in my mind this tuner is nice and works well enough that it alone is worth downloading the app for. Wild Chords is a really excellent app for the iPad -- it has already won awards in Europe, but just recently arrived on the North American App Store. If you've got young ones who've been looking to start learning guitar, or wouldn't mind figuring out a few chords for yourself, grab a five-string and the app, and see what you think.
Daily iPad App: Weird but True!
While geared toward kids, National Geographic's Weird but True! is a treat for anyone with an iPad who enjoys perusing random trivia. Shake or swipe the iPad within the app to get a random interesting fact, then rate it based on how weird you think the fact is. You can bookmark facts you like, email them to someone or use a fact finder to look for something specific. You also can see weekly top weird facts as rated by users. Weird but True! has 300 facts, and I can see future updates adding more. The type is large and easy to read, and the graphics are catchy and have the same professional quality as National Geographic magazine. If you want an educational trivia app for the iPad, Weird but True! is a good deal for US$1.99.
Daily iPad App: GeoMaster Plus HD
I tried the original GeoMaster app from French mobile developer VirtuaMobile a long time ago, but the HD version is well-suited to the bigger iPad screen. GeoMaster Plus HD is a geography quizzing game. It is simple enough, flashing text on the screen and asking you to tap the appropriate location. You battle against the clock but only to beat your times. This is a basic learning tool, and is fun yet relaxed, lacking really flashy or annoying elements. As such, it is perfect for kids learning geography. You can choose from states, countries, capitals and French departments, and players need only tap the appropriate spots on the screen to register answers. GeoMaster Plus HD adds a few things for the iPad. The larger screen makes it somewhat easier to tap the maps. Still, you can pinch to zoom and swipe to pan around if you can't hit Rhode Island with your giant fingers. The graphics are crisp and attractive, and the app really nails the chalkboard look. The drawstring on the pull-down map (which accesses the Atlas) even interacts as you tilt the iPad. The Atlas is a basic factoid lookup tool for the geography used in the game. It isn't that detailed nor is it as fun to browse as the game is to play. There are much better atlas apps, so consider this a somewhat weak freebie. Still, GeoMaster Plus HD is a fun, accessible and useful educational game for learning geography. Even at full price I can recall paying much more for flash cards which weren't nearly this enjoyable. Pick it up if you have a friend or relative who needs to learn some basic geography fast.
Daily iPad App: ShopSmart by Billeo
Billeo is an online shopping assistant and payment service that saves passwords, fills out forms and helps you both shop and pay bills online. To expand its service, the company just released ShopSmart, an iPad app that keeps track of reward cards and other discounts while you shop. When you launch ShopSmart for the first time, you are prompted to enter your existing Billeo account information or setup a new account. You don't have to setup a Billeo account to use ShopSmart, but most of the value-added features are not available without an account. Having a free Billeo account lets you fill in form information automatically, receive additional discounts and save your credit card information in the app's e-wallet., Registering for an account is easy, all you need is an email address to create a username and password. Once you enter your account information, you can add your Loyalty cards to the app in the settings. At launch, Billeo lets you add offers from providers like Visa, Discover, AARP, and Billeo itself. There's only six providers, but Billeo plans to expand this list in the future. Within the settings you can also manage your e-wallet information, add location information for your Daily Deals and setup your Facebook account so you can share while you shop. Once you've entered all your personal information, you are ready to jump in and start finding some bargains. The app has a web browser interface that lets you shop by searching for an item or visiting a retailer's web site. If I want a new Baxter State Parka from L.L. Bean, I can go directly to L.L. Bean's website or search for the item using the search field. If you search, the search results will include an offer tag to highlight those stores with a redeemable discount. As you shop, discount offers will be shown in the bottom left-hand corner. Just click the offers icon to see your current discounts. If you accept a discount, it will be automatically applied during checkout. ShopSmart will also fill in your shipping, billing and credit card information, too. It's cumbersome to type all that personal information using the iPad, so being able to let the app do it for you is a huge bonus. ShopSmart also has a social component called ShopTalk that lets you share items you want to buy and offers that you find. ShopTalk keeps track of your posts and lets you read and respond to comments within the app. It's a great way to get feedback about a product before you purchase it. As you can tell from description thus far, ShopSmart is geared towards online shopping. There's no tie-in for local stores, primarily because most people aren't going to use their iPad while walking around the store. The only local features are found in the Daily Deals section which is populated by Groupon. This section, like the Loyalty cards section, will expand to include other services. Overall, ShopSmart is great for the online shopper who wants the convenience of using an iPad and has a lot of different reward card offers. Right now, the app is a little lean on the number of available offers that you can add and this definitely detracts from the overall experience. I would love to keep track of my AAA discounts, Best Buy discount, Barnes & Noble discount using ShopSmart, but right now I can't. I do like the clean interface of ShopSmart and the familiar web browser look. I especially appreciate the app's ability to do most of the grunt work like filling in forms and entering discount codes. If Billeo can add in more credit card offers and retailers, then the app will become a valuable tool for the discount shopper. ShopSmart from Billeo is available for free from the App Store.
Daily iPad App: Photogene
Unlike many, I didn't buy the iPhone 4S for Siri. It's nice to have a voice assistant, but what I really wanted was the camera. I shoot a lot of photos throughout the day using my iPhone and have been looking for a good image editor to complement its camera. Now with PhotoStream, I am no longer limited to using the iPhone for editing. I can automatically transfer my photos and edit them on my iPad, a convenience that led me to try Photogene for the iPad. Photogene is a fantastic editing application that's great for tweaking and touching up photos. You name it and Photogene has it. It lets you crop, straighten, resize, sharpen, reduce noise, adjust color, correct red-eye and remove unwanted blemishes or spots. If you want to get more creative, there's also specialized effects like reflection or vignette and standard effects like dodge & burn, blur, and grayscale. You can add captions and text to images and apply artistic filters such as sepia or charcoal. There's even several categories of presets that'll let you add a border or change the look of your photo in just a few taps. And if you don't like what you have done, there's multiple undo and redo. One of my favorite features is the collage creator which takes up to six photos and turns them into one image using templates. The app comes with a handful of collage templates and you can buy a pack of 60 that gives you twelve designs for each group of photos (12 templates for a 2 photo collage, 12 templates for a 3 photo collage, and so on). When you're done, you can export your images back to your iPad's photo library, upload them to an online web service like Dropbox, Flickr or Picasa, or share them via email, Facebook or Twitter. If you have a printer, you can use AirPrint to get a hard copy. Photogene is available for $2.99 from the App Store and is a must have for anyone that uses their iOS device for photos or image editing.
